Note: These comments are
not designed to "summarize" the reading. Rather, they are available
to highlight key ideas that will emerge in our classroom discussion. As always,
it's best to read the original text to gain full value from the course.

Striphas studies the social impact
of Oprah’s Book Club, seeking to understand how this powerful influence
on the reading public constructs what the author terms a “dialectic with
the everyday.” To that end, Striphas asks, “How have those who orchestrated
and participated in Oprah’s Book Club together negotiated the purpose
and value of books and reading?” (p. 296). Answering this, the author
situates himself within a feminist framework, proposing that participants in
the Club might imagine their activities as counter-patriarchal. From that perspective,
Striphas surveys literature on women-as-readers and finds two common themes:
(1) women’s reading is often demeaned in dominant society (and even by
some feminist scholars) and (2) scholars should nonetheless reveal how women’s
reading can be considered as important and, potentially, emancipatory. Here,
Striphas draws from the work of Janice Radway and Tania
Modleski to propose a “feminist aesthetics”
that works (sometimes subtly) to place women in a meaningful and transformative
position in relationship to dominant society through their interaction with
these sorts of texts.

Following this introduction, Striphas draws from transcripts to illustrate how
Oprah’s Book Club speaks to (and respects) the experience of the show’s
female viewers. Initially, the author notes that page length and subject matter
is selected according to seasons - presumably to accommodate the changing nature
of women’s duties: “Oprah’s Book Club producers were sensitive,
in other words, to how books and reading could be made to fit into the routines
of women’s lives, rather than placing the burden on women to adjust their
schedules to accommodate books and reading” (p. 302). Striphas then notes
how readers of Club books used these texts to position themselves outside of
their duties within the home and “the sometimes tedious and unfulfilling
role expectations placed upon them as women, if only temporarily” (p.
302). Another strategy of Oprah’s Book Club is its emphasis on “actuality,”
the sense that books, even fiction ones, reflect reality and offer a lens upon
the “everyday lives” of its readers (p. 308). [Stepping
outside of the reading, one cannot help but reflect on Oprah’s anger at
James Frey’s deceptive book, A Million Little Pieces].
Doing so, the Club “provided women with symbolic and practical resources
with which to challenge reified conceptions of their subjectivities” (p.
308). This component leads Striphas to propose a Dialectic with the
Everyday.

The Dialectic emerges when women simultaneously escape their everyday lives
and confront them. In this manner, “Identifying with characters and events
in specific Oprah’s Book Club selections . . . allowed these participants
to interrogate some of their everyday assumptions and routines” (p. 310).
Striphas concludes with a discussion of how, despite the essentializing nature
of Oprah’s Book Club (with its presumed audience), this phenomenon deserves
continued research as an exemplar of a feminist aesthetics. What remains, the
author adds, is to study the impacts and changes women may experience when they
close the book.